Roosting near the Sequoia Apartments at Turner Mill, an 8-foot-tall welded eagle sculpture created by Lewiston artist Malen Pierson was installed on the S. Daniels Road roundabout last week.
Passers-by may have seen the eagle’s first flight during the installation process, as the bulky bird was hoisted by a Heber City truck-mounted crane and affixed to its flat boulder foundation, sourced from local supplier American Stone.
The eagle is made entirely of recycled metal, most sourced from Idaho Salvage & Metals in Preston. Pierson has sourced materials from the company for over two decades and described staff as “almost like family.”
Pierson estimated that he hand-cut more than 1,000 feathers for the sculpture.
“It wasn’t too well-thought-out, but I knew I could do it,” Pierson said. “I also knew if this is going to be a piece I’m proud of, then it’s going to take that much detail.”
The bird’s head and tail are stainless steel. As the body rusts over the coming winter, the head and tail will be unaffected — an intentional aspect of the design meant to resemble the maturation of bald eagles, whose heads take five years to turn white.
The sculpture is part of a city initiative to beautify new roundabouts. It began earlier this year with the installation of four wildlife sculptures created by Wyoming-based artist Jonathan LaBenne: a shepherd at the intersection of Heritage Farms Parkway and 550 East, a cougar at the intersection of Heritage Farms Parkway and Mill Road, an elk at the intersection of 600 South and 300 West and a coyote on Coyote Parkway.
City manager Matt Brower stumbled across Pierson’s work at an art show in Steamboat Springs, Colorado while on vacation, which led to the collaboration.
City officials decided on an eagle because of the roundabout’s proximity to the Heber Valley Airport. Plus, the metal tones fit well in the “industrial side of town,” said Heber City public information officer Ryan Bunnell.
The sculptures are funded by revenue from the Trails, Arts and Parks tax. Pierson’s eagle sculpture cost $20,000.
The artist said there were out-of-pocket costs, too — including the “sacrifice” of an anvil from the late 1800s he bought in an antique store.
“I was going to use (the anvil’s horn) to form a beak out of metal for the eagle’s head, and it just didn’t come out right. So, I decided to cut it off,” Pierson said. “It made the perfect beak.”
Eagle-eyed observers will notice a John Deere wrench in the bird’s talons. Farming equipment has long been a source of inspiration in Pierson’s welded animals, which he has been creating for 30-plus years.
Pierson’s father taught him to weld, and he developed his signature style while studying art at Utah State University.
He started with goats, an ongoing series he calls “The Goat Eating My Stuff.” Pierson owns two pygmy goats and once caught one in the act of chewing on his son’s bike handle. Since then, Pierson’s affixed garage sale objects — model trains, guitars, coffee machines — inside the see-through stomachs of his metal goat sculptures.
Pierson said Johnny Depp owns one of these goats with lunch boxes in its stomach.
His sculptures have caught the attention of other big names.
Pierson designed the awards for the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, with Robert Redford taking one home as a souvenir. Of the celebrities he’s rubbed shoulders with, he says Queen Latifah, who bought an owl sculpture at an art show in Beverly Hills, was the most down-to-earth.
“We just connected,” he said. “Some celebrities are ostentatious, or in other words, unapproachable. She was very kind.”
Pierson also created two “John Deer” sculptures made from tractor parts at the Studio Crossing development in Park City and the wall-mounted sculptures of plant and animal state icons in the Delta Sky Club at Salt Lake City Airport.
Pierson’s white whale is the tank parked on the side of Smith & Edwards in Ogden, which he wants to adorn with metal ravens.
“Even when I was a little kid, I’d go there, like, ‘Wow, I want this tank.’ But what little kid didn’t want it when they played army men?” he said. “We’re all just adult children living out our lives as artists.”
In three decades of birthing welded wildlife, Pierson said the most important lesson he’s learned is to ask for help. For the eagle, he enlisted his welding engineer brother, Wade, to design the interior structure. Pierson joked that if he took on the engineering alone, he would make “the leaning tower of metal.”
In creating a sculpture for Heber City, Pierson was struck by how much the municipality had grown.
“An artist leaves footprints in life,” he said. “I see this eagle being around in 50 years in Heber, even if Heber City doubles in the next 10 years.”
